1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a manually retractable vehicle door mirror in which a shaft is formed integrally with a housing support member or mirror rotating member in order to reduce the number of parts and improve efficiency of assembly operations as well as provide large bearing capacity at a location outwardly away from a location of the shaft to bear bending moments acting on the housing support member or mirror rotating member due to external forces.
2. Description of the Related Art
A conventional manually retractable vehicle door mirror is described in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 8-216783 (FIG. 5). The door mirror is configured as follows: a rotating shaft (54) is fixed upright to a base (50) attached to a door of a vehicle, a frame (58) is supported on the rotating shaft (54) in such a way as to be able to rotate around the axis of the rotating shaft (54), and a body (housing) (74) is fixedly supported on the frame (58) (the numbers in parentheses are reference numerals used in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 8-216783). Also, a conventional outside mirror for microbuses and trucks is described in Japanese Utility Model Laid-Open No. 2-49753 (FIG. 6). As shown in FIG. 17, the outside mirror is configured as follows: a base 10 is attached to a car body 2, a mirror (not shown) is supported on a pivot 22 at one end of a stay 20, and a support shaft 23 is formed at the other end of the stay 20, looking downward, and supported rotatably on the base 10.
The door mirror described in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 8-216783 requires the rotating shaft (54) as an independent part, increasing the number of parts and requiring a work process for assembling the rotating shaft (54) onto the base (50). The outside mirror described in Japanese Utility Model Laid-Open No. 2-49753, in which the support shaft 23 is integrated with the stay 20, requires a smaller number of parts. With this configuration, bending moments acting on the stay 20 due to external forces are borne by pressing abutment between an outer circumferential surface of the support shaft 23 and an inner circumferential surface of a passage hole 11b as well as by pressing abutment between an outer circumferential surface of the base 10 and an inner circumferential surface of an annular recess 21, where the abutting position of the latter two components is located outwardly away from the abutting position of the former two components.